Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leader of the House, had a town hall meeting with her San Fran constituents on Saturday, and it didn’t go so well. She was apparently heckled and jeered throughout for not being anti-war enough and for not moving to impeach Bush:

SAN FRANCISCO — Swarmed by antiwar protesters, Rep. Nancy Pelosi on Saturday called the invasion of Iraq "a grotesque mistake" but rejected calls for President Bush’s impeachment.

Shouting to be heard above the boos and catcalls at a rowdy community forum, Pelosi — the leader of Democrats in the House — urged her constituents to instead channel their anger and energies into the 2006 midterm elections, when control of Congress will be at stake.

But the part that just cracked me up isn’t in any of the news stories I’ve seen. I heard the audio clip on the Laura Ingraham Show, but it looks like you have to be a paid member to listen to any of the audio from the show. Pelosi was defending herself and fellow Democrats against criticism that they’re weak-kneed and ineffectual. She was challenged by a heckler to cite even one thing they’d accomplished to thwart the eeevilll Republican agenda.

Pelosi said that she and the Democratic leadership stopped Social Security reform, in spite of criticism that they didn’t offer an alternative of their own. Her voice rising with pride, Pelosi declared, "We went for one solid year, taking heat from everyone who said, ‘Why don’t you have a plan? You can’t beat something with nothing.’ And we said, ‘Oh, yes we can.’ And we did!"

The audience actually cheered. I started laughing so hard I could hardly keep driving.

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Mayor Ray Nagin shared his vision of New Orleans on M.L. King Day. Cajuns, the French Quarter, and crawfish etouffé don’t have much of a place. Note that every news source I’ve checked has the same quote, punctuated the same way, and it’s wrong. I’ve heard the audio twice, and I’m re-punctuating and adding emphasis to more closely match what Nagin said:

“We as black people, it´s time — it’s time for us to come together. It´s time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be: a chocolate New Orleans. And I don’t care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are, this city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African American city. It´s the way God wants it to be."

Imagine the reaction if, say, Paul Prudhomme invoked his Cajun (Arcadian, or French Canadian) heritage and called for a "vanilla New Orleans."

I have a dream, Ray.

Nagin didn’t just imitate Louis Farrakhan, though. He imitated Pat Robertson, too (I’m correcting some sections of this quote, too, based on watching the actual video at CNN):

Mayor Ray Nagin suggested Monday that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting.

"Surely God is mad at America. He’s sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroying and putting stress on this country," Nagin, who is black, said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Day.

"Surely he’s not approval of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We’re not taking care of ourselves."

Life is so much simpler when you have God on your side telling you what he wants.

Meanwhile, Cathy Young dispelled some of the myths that have surrounded the Katrina tragedy:

From the beginning, reports on Katrina portrayed the hurricane as not just a natural disaster, not even just a tragic case of government bungling, but a devastating indictment of American racism and social injustice. … Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean declared, ”We must come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age, and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not."

As it turns out, Dean got two out of three wrong.

… A study of the locations where bodies were recovered showed that they were not disproportionately concentrated in low-income neighborhoods. According to the story, ”42 percent of the bodies found in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes were recovered in neighborhoods with poverty rates higher than 30 percent. That’s only slightly higher than the 39 percent of residents who lived in such neighborhoods."

And race? In a database on 486 Katrina victims, ”African-Americans outnumbered whites 51 percent to 44 percent. In the area overall, African-Americans outnumber whites 61 percent to 36 percent."

So black residents were less likely to die than white residents. Who would have figured that from any of the news coverage? Well, Dean did get one factor right — but it’s hard to blame a conspiracy or injustice:

Age did matter. People 60 and older made up about 15 percent of New Orleans residents but 74 percent of the known victims. Many reports suggest that this sad statistic is due not to callous abandonment of the most helpless but to the fact that many elderly people, who had weathered many previous storms, refused to evacuate. … 

Or maybe God was mad at old people for piling so much debt on their children and grandchildren.

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In the last few days, a bazillion people have remembered Martin Luther King, Jr., in almost as many different ways. Some recall his opposition to the Vietnam War and use this to bash Bush and the "warmongering Republicans." Others remember the "content of their character" and proclaim that King would be a neocon today or compare today’s black leaders unfavorably to him. Some simply provide a fair, honest, and uplifting picture of the King legacy. And what great person or event can avoid being honored (?) by a Scrappleface story?

Thanks to Gateway Pundit, though, for drawing attention to something truly noteworthy that’s being done with the legacy of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks (emphasis added):

Moroccan blog "Or Does It Explode" has a wonderful tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. posted up this weekend.

Or Does It Explode posted pages from a historic Civil Rights comic book, The Montgomery Story, printed in 1956. This comic helped shape the Civil Rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. ODIE explains the background to this historic "kid’s" book. It is a fascinating story.

What makes this exciting is that Or Does It Explode, Big Pharoah, Iraq the Model, Egyptian Sandmonkey, Crossroads Arabia, Amarji- A Heretics Blog, Freedom for Egyptians, Hammorabi, Regime Change Iran, Syria Comment PLUS, etc. (forgive me if I missed you!) are a few of the several brave voices who are using some of these same tools today, promoted in the comic book from 1956, to help shape the future of tomorrow’s Middle East.

Go read the entire Montgomery Story comic book, which tells the story of the bus boycott triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks. Then think about how unbelievably cool it is that this comic book is "Awakening a Civil Rights Movement in the Middle East"!

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Chris Wallace interviewed the three candidates to replace Tom DeLay — Congressmen Blunt, Boehner, and Shadegg — on Fox News Sunday this morning. It’s clear to me that if the Republicans in the House are serious about cleaning up their act, instituting serious reforms, and returning to the spirit and vision that brought them into the majority in 1994, they should elect Rep. Shadegg of Arizona. Instead, they seem poised to elect Blunt, who’s been the acting majority leader since DeLay stepped down. Blunt mouthed a few platitudes about reform, but certainly gave me the impression that he represents business as usual in Washington.

I’m therefore enthusiastically joining the growing list of self-described "center-right" bloggers, led by N.Z. Bear, Hugh Hewitt, and Glenn Reynolds, who’ve signed onto the following statement:

We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.

We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.

But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.

As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.

Earlier today, Reynolds mentioned a Howard Kurtz report about Shadegg and the "spirit of 1994," and added:

CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow said on his blog that if Shadegg were to succeed Tom DeLay in the No. 2 House post, it ‘would stop the misbegotten march toward big government conservatism and budget excess which has gotten the Republican Congress into so much trouble.’"

I don’t know enough about Shadegg to be sure, but somebody needs to stop that "misbegotten march." And regardless of who’s elected, we need to see reforms that will ensure a lot more transparency and accountability.

I don’t know a lot about Shadegg myself, but I liked what I heard this morning. Shadegg called for an end to secret "earmarks" by committee chairs and party leaders. These are the pork projects added to bills without discussion or even ordinary members’ knowledge, the process by which we got Alaska’s "bridge to nowhere" and a thousand other such abominations.

I like Shadegg even more after reading what Kurtz said about him:

In arguing that the Republicans have "lost sight of our ideals," Shadegg, 56, is espousing not only tighter ethics rules, but also a return to the smaller-government ethos that has been lost in an era of ballooning budgets and pork-barrel spending.

"I think he’s by far the most conservative guy who’s acceptable to a broad ideological spectrum in the [Republican] Conference," said former representative Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, who encouraged Shadegg to run. "He’s a very easy guy to get along with, a very good-natured guy. He doesn’t make enemies." While clearly an underdog, Toomey said, "John is in the best position to demand a departure from the old ways of doing business."
…
… Steeped in free-market libertarianism, Shadegg became a lawyer, worked in the state attorney general’s office and then served as counsel to Republicans in the Arizona legislature.

He won a House seat in his suburban Phoenix district in 1994, the year that Newt Gingrich and the Republicans won control of the House. Soon afterward, he opposed a measure to phase out federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, saying the funding should be ended immediately.
…
The Arizona Republic has called Shadegg a "firebrand" and "equal-opportunity iconoclast." He argued in 2001 that Bush’s $1.6 trillion tax cut was not big enough. He has bucked the administration on a number of issues, refusing to vote for the aviation security act or Medicare prescription-drug benefits, one of only 25 Republicans to oppose the costly program. …

So, listen up, Republicans: it’s time to clean up your act, return to the principles that brought you to the majority, and live up to the promises you made to get elected. That means no more business as usual and no more back-room dealmaking as usual. That means electing a leader like Steve Shadegg who will really clean House, not just mouth platitudes while conducting business as usual.

If you’re represented by a Republican, contact your congresscritter and ask him or her to support John Shadegg and serious reform. Ask him or her to use Hugh Hewitt’s leadership job application questionnaire to screen all candidates for leadership posts.

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Last night’s Broncos-Patriots game was a bit ugly at times, but Denver’s defense and special teams more than made up for a lackluster offense. Who would have believed that the defending Super Bowl champs, led by the quarterback who’d never lost a playoff game, would turn the ball over five times?

So Denver got its first playoff victory since Elway retired. Next — the winner of the Colts-Steelers game. As a Tennessee alumnus, I’m normally a Peyton Manning fan, but… if the Colts win (as everyone expects), Denver has to go to Indy next weekend; if the Steelers win, they come to Denver.

So I’m cheering on the Steelers right now, and so far it’s working. After an embarrassing 25-yard first quarter in which they couldn’t do anything right, the Colts put together a 9-minute drive in the second — and had to settle for a field goal. Score at the half: Steelers 14, Colts 3.

Wow, maybe Denver will be playing at home next week after all! Of course, Roethlisberger and the Steelers sliced through the Colts defense so effortlessly on their first couple of possessions that they took the crowd right out of the game — if they can do the same to the Broncos here, there goes the home field advantage.

But ask any Denver fan — or player — whether they’d rather play in Indy or Denver next week, and I think you’ll get the same answer. Go, Steelers! (This cheer is valid for today only.)

UPDATE: Steelers win, 21-18. So they’ll play Denver in Denver to determine who gets the honor of beating the NFC champ in Super Bowl XL.

What a game it was. People who dismiss football as just stupid, mindless physical violence just don’t get it. At its best –and this was — a football game embodies human drama on many levels. If you saw it, you know what I mean. 

For three quarters, Peyton Manning — the best quarterback playing today — looked completely ineffectual and was totally frustrated. The Colts trailed 21-3 and couldn’t seem to do anything right. It was 4th and 2, and Coach Tony Dungy waved in the punting team. Manning set his jaw and waved them back. He wouldn’t leave the field.

Dungy looked at him for a moment, and then gave in with a gesture that seemed to say, "OK, it’s on you." A spark of electricity ran through the crowd, which had been lifeless since the first quarter. The Colts made the first down. The crowd went crazy. The team suddenly looked energized and alive. A moment later, Manning threw a 50-yard touchdown pass, and the place went berserk. It was a ball game again.

Now, that was something, but that was just the beginning of the human drama. I’d guess that Steelers coach Bill Cowher has been called many things in his career, and "daring" was never one of them. But the electricity sparked by Manning’s demonstration of resolve and courage touched even the cautious, conservative Cowher. The Steelers’ drive stalled, and they faced 4th and inches on their own 36 yard line. Cowher went for it.

Folks, the sound that reverberated through the stadium was the fabric of the universe being rent. The Steelers were sitting on an 11-point lead in the middle of the fourth quarter, and they were on their own 36. Not the Colts’ 36, their own. And Cowher went for it on 4th down. Inconceivable.

Damned if they didn’t make it. And damned if they didn’t face another 4th down later in the same drive, go for it again, and make it again.

And damned if the game didn’t get even more exciting from there. And go right down to the wire.

No, this wasn’t just stupid, mindless physical violence. This was the finest kind of human drama — coaches, players, and even fans rising to the occasion and displaying the best of what makes us human.

It was courage and frustration, joy and devastation — and one shock, surprise, and edge-of-the-seat moment after another. One helluva football game.

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I might have missed this story if a partner in illicit activities from many years ago hadn’t tipped me off. Albert Hofmann turned 100 the other day:

GENEVA — LSD is an unlikely subject for a 100th birthday party. Yet the Swiss chemist who discovered the mind-altering drug and was its first human guinea pig is celebrating his centenary Wednesday _ in good health and with plans to attend an international seminar on the hallucinogenic.

"I had wonderful visions," Albert Hofmann said, recalling his first accidental consumption of the drug.

Didn’t we all? I’m still waiting for those flashbacks they promised me 30+ years ago. I want my free flashbacks!

Yes, I know — I’m not supposed to make light; some people died and many ruined their lives using "recreational" drugs in the 60s and 70s. But you know what? Most of us didn’t. The ones who did were reckless and irresponsible and/or had serious psychological problems long before "experimenting" with marijuana, hash, LSD, mushrooms, etc. Those things are, by any objective criteria, actually remarkably safe substances.

I was pretty immersed in the 70s drug culture (this was Tennessee; we were a bit behind California, you understand, so the 70s were our 60s), and I don’t regret it a bit — except for a couple of drinking and driving incidents that I’m just glad I survived. Most of the people I knew who really messed up their lives did so with alcohol. A few did it with pills or needle drugs. No one with pot or hallucinogenics.

The people who held down regular jobs or were good students or both, but smoked a joint while watching Saturday Night Live or ate mushrooms at the farm on a Saturday afternoon — we didn’t have a problem and didn’t mess up our lives. We just had some fun experiences that we like to reminisce about now that we’re getting old. And frankly, many of us would be willing to repeat those experiences if it weren’t for the legal risks and the fact that we’ve got more to lose these days. (It’s amazing how blasé you can be when you have no mortgage, your furniture is mostly cinder blocks and boards, and all your possessions fit into your VW bus.)

I still fondly remember one glorious fall evening on windowpane acid. Several of us were at a friend’s house out in the country, and we went out wandering through the adjacent fields enjoying the sounds and sights. We lost track of one of our cohorts, whom I’ll call Albert (his real name).

After a while we found him lying flat on his back under a small tree, gripping a tree root tightly with his outstretched right hand, and staring wide-eyed straight up into the night sky at the stars and moon above him.

"Hey, Albert," we said, "come on back to the house with us. It’s getting cool out here."

"I can’t," Albert replied. "If I let go, I’ll fall off."

We laughed until tears ran down our cheeks.

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I just watched ABC 20/20’s new John Stossel special, "Stupid in America," and I’m just blown away. John Stossel is a national treasure. His libertarian series of ABC News specials are probably the most significant television documentaries ever, and this one may be his most important. I want every parent in America to see this hour of television.

Go read the story linked above; it provides a pretty good overview of the show’s contents and main points. What it can’t do is provide the emotional impact of watching the video. The footage of desperate Washington, D.C. parents and kids in a gym watching a lottery drawing, overcome with joy and relief when they’re selected for a spot in a charter school, left me in tears.

The images of sanctimonious teachers insisting that competition is wrong "for schools and for people" and that "there are no bad teachers" and that public schools are "getting better by leaps and bounds" left me fantasizing acts of violence. If you’ve got a really strong stomach, go to ABC’s Message Boards and read some of the arrogant, condescending, defensive, hate-filled comments and flat-out lies by union teachers.

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While you were reading story after story about how Saddam was a secularist who’d never cooperate with radical Islamists and how there was absolutely no connection between Iraq and terrorist networks, a funny thing was happening at the Defense Intelligence Agency: they were translating some of the millions of government documents seized in Iraq. A mere handful, really — about 50,000 out of 2 million "exploitable items" (documents, tapes, floppy discs, hard drives, etc.) have been examined and translated. Some of them touch on the subject of terrorists in Iraq:

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps–in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak–and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria’s GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. …

Read the whole thing. Then start writing the prominent opponents of the Iraq invasion and ask them when they’ll apologize for their many  false and slanderous statements on this issue.

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The National Western Stock Show is under way in Denver. This is the 100th year of what’s called "the Super Bowl of stock shows." Yesterday (Jan. 10), they held the stock show parade through downtown Denver. The Rocky Mountain News has a nice online photo gallery, including this great picture of Texas longhorns running through the financial district.

I haven’t attended the Stock Show since my old friend Albert came all the way out from Tennessee with some of his Santa Gertrudis cattle. I guess that was <mumble>teen years ago. Nevertheless, I like it when the Stock Show is in town. You can tell, too, and not just from the news stories and the faint perfume in the air. Lots of advertising is geared toward Stock Show visitors these days — boots and Western wear, dually pickup trucks, gentlemen’s clubs…

I like the Stock Show because it reminds us of something that embarrasses many of the "urban sophisticates": Denver is a cow town.

Not a sheep town — a cow town. Sure, they had sheep in the Stock Show Parade. Horses, too. And people exhibit sheep, pigs, horses, llamas, alpacas, rabbits, chickens, gerbils, and I don’t know what all else at the show. But it’s the cows that are the reason for the Stock Show. Not the sheep or other critters. And it’s the cows that are the reason for cowboys.

Note to Ang Lee: Cowboys herd cows. Not sheep. The people tending sheep are sheepherders or shepherds. Absolutely not cowboys. Try to get that right next time.

There’s more bull coming to Denver tomorrow: the State Legislature reconvenes. I’ll have more to say about that later.

UPDATE: OK, I was confused. The legislative session actually began today. The Gov’s "state of the state" address to the legislature is Thursday. (Actually, I relied on the National Council of State Legislatures, which had it wrong.)

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I finally got around to checking out the voting results for last week’s Watcher’s Council nominees, and I’m glad to see that the neo-neocon post that I recommended was the top non-council vote-getter. If you haven’t checked it out, do so — and be sure to look at some of the fascinating comments.

You also simply have to go read Dymphna’s winning council entry at the Gates of Vienna. It’s the latest installment in the story of one Indonesian slave guest worker in Saudi Arabia:

I wasn’t going to post on Nour Miyati’s suffering again. I swore I wouldn’t. Maybe I thought if I didn’t put up anything, then it would all just go away. However, being an ostrich has real limits. And if we aren’t at least willing to bear witness to another’s agony, then do we have the right to speak at all?

What the Saudis have done, what they have permitted to be done, to Ms. Miyati is so inhumane that it almost beggars description.

I can’t begin to do the story of Nour Miyati justice by quoting excerpts; go read the whole thing.

The Saudi culture is so depraved, disgusting, and unspeakably evil that one is tempted to call for nukes to turn the entire Arabian peninsula into a sheet of glass.

At a minimum, as Dymphna notes, decent people simply have to express their outrage when Harvard and Georgetown accept millions in Saudi slaveholder money for future whitewashing of Saudi Wahhabism, when Barbara Walters conducts a fawning interview with the head of the slavery-supporting Saudi royal family, and when the President of the United States has his picture taken holding hands with such contemptible 7th-century barbarians.

Related posts:
"Slavery is a part of Islam" 
I’m just appalled

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Today was a pretty average January day in Denver, with a high of 44° F. and clear to partly cloudy skies. But it’s a special weather day in Denver history. On January 9, 1875, the low was -29° F., the coldest temperature ever recorded in Denver.

The record high for January 9th? 72° F.

So on this day in Denver, the temperature can be considered "normal," more or less, if it’s somewhere within a range of 101°. I suppose there are places on the northern plains that have days with even wider ranges between their record high and low, but 101° strikes me as a pretty amazing span of possibilities. 

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Reasonable people can disagree about whether the recently-disclosed NSA monitoring violates anyone’s privacy rights and should have been submitted to the FISA court. Personally, I think the correct answer becomes clear if you ask the question the right way. Do you have a right — under the U.S. Constitution or under Lockean natural rights theory — to keep private your communications with persons waging war against the United States? I don’t think you do — not under any theory of rights that acknowledges that nation-states may properly exist. Others apparently disagree.

But reasonable people should be able to agree on this: it’s simply outrageous that some FISA judges are anonymously discussing the NSA program with journalists and speculating on the merits of the issue.

http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=4109

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According to all the people who really care, our planet is doomed unless we stop global warming, and the only way to do that is to stop generating greenhouse gases, as mandated by the Kyoto Protocol. Critics have argued that adhering to Kyoto would cripple our economy and leave us shivering in the dark, but that’s a small price to pay for saving the planet, isn’t it? The Europeans are all on board — why are we Americans being so greedy and selfish and short-sighted? It’s the eeevilll BushCheneyHalliburtonOillll!!

Well, first of all, it turns out the Europeans aren’t on board. In typical liberal fashion, they apparently think it’s enough to have good intentions; you don’t actually have to do anything to meet the Kyoto greenhouse limits. As Dan Seligman notes in Forbes, western Europe has failed spectacularly to abide by the treaty they criticize us for not ratifying (emphasis added):

The Kyoto rules say that western Europe must get their emissions to a level 8% below those prevailing in 1990. But virtually all those countries–the only significant exception is Germany–are going in the wrong direction. The latest available data, covering emissions through 2003, tell us that in the years since the treaty was negotiated, carbon dioxide levels increased by 7% in France, 11% in Italy and 29% in Spain. The increase for western Europe as a whole was 5.4%.

After many years of European chatter about the monstrous evil perpetrated by George W. Bush in rejecting Kyoto, it is of possible interest that the increase in carbon emissions in the U.S. during those years was slightly lower (4.7%).

So what’s a dedicated greenie to do? Even the well-intentioned, nuanced, enlightened Europeans aren’t doing anything to save the planet!

Fortunately, a study by a Stanford University scientist suggests another alternative that could save us from global warming without forcing me to give up my SUV or turn down my furnace until ice forms in the sink. According to Ken Caldeira, temperate and boreal forests (unlike their tropical counterparts) contribute to global warming:

Trees soak up massive amounts of energy from the sun. Much of this, he argues, is gradually released in the form of heat, especially in dark evergreen forests in the north, but also in temperate forests.

Unlike tropical forests, Canadian forests don’t release much cooling moisture.

His computer model indicates that this warming influence is more powerful than the cooling job that forests do when they soak up carbon dioxide.

In one simulation, the team covered much of the northern hemisphere with forests and saw a jump in surface air temperature of nearly three degrees Celsius.

So here’s my plan: We need to find out from Caldeira how many additional acres of trees led to that 3° C. temperature increase in his computer model. Then we can calculate the number of acres of forest per 1/10° temperature change. As I recall, advocates of Kyoto admitted that at best, it would only reduce global warming by a few tenths of a degree.

Let’s assume the model suggests a million acres more or less of forest leads to a 1/10° temperature change. The U.S., Canada, Russia, and other heavily-forested Northern Hemisphere nations would then initiate a crash program to clear-cut a couple or three million acres of forests — preferably dark evergreen forests, such as the Tongass National Forest in Alaska — and plant high-albedo vegetation, such as grasses and grains, in their place.

Besides reducing global warming, this would have several other beneficial effects. Revenue from the government timber sales would help balance the budget. The increased supply of lumber would lead to lower housing prices, more new construction, and more jobs. Sure, some bears and deer and spotted owls would be left homeless — but that’s a small price to pay for saving the planet! It’s their planet, too — shouldn’t they be willing to make some sacrifices for it?

So let’s get those hard-working men and women in the forest products industries working even harder! We’ve got trees to fell and a planet to save! Break out the flannel shirts and chainsaws!

"Oh, I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK, I sleep all night and I work all day."

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Someone asked me if I’d seen Brokeback Mountain yet. No, and I don’t intend to.

Look, I’m a libertarian and basically a live-and-let-live kinda guy. But tolerating deviant behavior doesn’t mean endorsing or accepting it. Based on what I’ve read, it seems that this film crosses a line that I don’t think should be crossed, and in doing so it slanders cowboys.

I may not be a native Coloradan (I moved here over 22 years ago from Tennessee), but I consider myself a Westerner with a Western ethos and worldview. That means the image of the cowboy has meaning to me and is enduring, inviolable, and sacrosanct.

Brokeback Mountain apparently chooses to spit on the image of the cowboy. It portrays its two so-called "cowboy" protagonists behaving in a way that no real cowboy would behave.

Real cowboys have dignity, pride, and self-respect.

Real cowboys won’t degrade and embarrass themselves and their profession.

Real cowboys have core principles that they abide by and lines that they won’t cross.

Real cowboys know what they are and what they aren’t, and they don’t get "confused" about their identity.

Real cowboys don’t herd sheep.

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